A Genesis
by Five Minutes Til Bedtime
Summary: Born to a whore in the city before the Wall, Ethan learns survival from the streets.


**A Genesis**

Summary:

Born to a whore in the city before the Wall, Ethan learns survival from the streets.

Part of the Acts of Faith series.

* * *

><p>Ethan had belonged to Vega his entire life. He meant that in a way most don't. His family never fled to the city; they were bred there, generations of destitution stretching back beyond memory. He was born two years before the angels came and knew the streets before the politicians and the generals and the archangel moved in, declaring that here would be the place they would raise their city. They hadn't much seemed to care that the ruins were still home to a handful of survivors. Marching in their troops and their soldier's families they demanded an order like that city have never known.<p>

And so Sin City became a Haven for all of mankind.

Ethan was there when it happened. He was four when the Wall's construction began. Fetching water, gathering scrap metal, keeping an eye on the skies for a hint of wings, Ethan grew into his legs on the construction grind. If the strangers had been anyone else they would have failed, but these strangers weren't just anyone, they were soldiers. Troublemakers were whipped. Those who refused to work were exiled – a death sentence as good as any.

Even so, it still wouldn't have worked if not for the archangel.

In those early days before the Wall rose and with it came the class distinctions that followed, there was less distance between them all. Everyone labored – even the archangel. Ethan remembered playing with the other children, whispering secret stories about the being whose strength almost built the Wall by itself, who killed off any eight-ball that ventured close, who protected them all. They'd sneak about trying to catch glimpses of the long limbs that carried such unnatural power, daring each other to touch the walls of the tower he slept in at night.

For the most part the angel still remained a myth to them, but Ethan could still recall with perfect clarity his rush of delight when one day when fetching water he'd drawn close enough to the creature to see the blue of his eyes. Blue eyes – not dark, not black, _human _eyes – and they'd looked at him, just for a moment, reacting to the little sound.

He watched the Wall rise up around the city, brick by brick, weapon upon weapon, and when the people stated to pour in he watched them too. He saw the cruel, suspicious eyes and the mean curves of their mouths. All of them had it – even those who wept at the sight of the gates, even those who fell down and kissed the earth, even those who raised up their hands for the Child.

Ethan was a child, but no one seemed to care much about him.

He never knew his dad – likely the man had never known about him either – but his mom left enough of an impression in his head that he didn't think he had room for another parent inside anyway. She'd been a hooker in the city Before, and was a prostitute in the After. The world's oldest profession wouldn't stop until the end of the world and though the Extermination had taken a good try at it, it wasn't long before they fell back into the rhythm of things. Laboring on the Wall in the daytime and shedding her clothes at night. The first was mandatory, the second kept them fed. Some of the men liked to ruffle Ethan's hair as they came in and out of the hotel room; some would kick or curse him if they saw him.

Sometimes Ethan worked at night too, gathering scraps and trash and anything that might be pawned or sold or consumed. Other times he sat in the corner, wedged between the moth eaten sofa and the wall, watching the men come and go and listening to the sounds of his mother working.

Ethan had loved her fiercely. A thin, hollow-faced woman with wide, bulging eyes and yellow teeth stained from smoking, she was beautiful in ways Ethan couldn't describe. In the early hours of the morning she would curl her body around his, stroking his hair as he fell asleep, whispering in his ear.

The things she whispered were strange to him. No one believed in the Old Religion anymore. Praying was a liable death sentence if anyone overheard – grounds for your neighbors to drag you kicking and screaming out of the city, if they didn't just kill you first. Everyone was confused and scared and rotten. Superstition slunk around every doorway. With the angels turned to monsters, no one was quite sure what to think of the Big Man upstairs. It was said that praying lit you up like a beacon. It was dangerous.

His mother didn't seem to care. There was this necklace she wore, a simple thing with a little silver cross like a target upon her chest. Every night when daylight faded she'd take the chain from where it was hidden beneath her clothes and press it into his palms, chapped lips kissing his forehead. He'd wear it obediently, taking pleasure that the metal never ran cold, always against either her skin or his own, like a magic in itself. In the morning hours, when all the men had gone home, she'd lift it from his neck, draping it around his neck before she'd reach for her robe and go to sleep against him.

There were other things she did, little rituals and sayings. She'd hold Ethan's hands and teach him to bow his head and say thank you before ever meal. He learned how to ask for things and what things to ask for. Most importantly, she taught him how to get on his knees before bed and whisper his sins and secrets into the mattress. When he learned to do it without her asking, his mother had smiled so widely that it instantly became his favorite part. "My little angel," she'd called him once. He'd flinched and she'd grown quiet, never calling him that again. He'd tracked his eyes in the mirror for days.

Ethan didn't understand.

She died three months before the Wall was finished. Ethan was eight and digging through the trash, his mother's necklace tucked securely under his clothes. Her corpse was already cold when he'd gotten home, her body naked and stretched out across the bed. A ring of purple bruises ensnared her throat where her God was missing.

Fire rushed through his bones – an all-consuming rage. Her body had been frigid when he'd hit it, begging her to wake up, to not be dead, to stop pretending, but already by that time he'd seen enough corpses to know his mother's glazed eyes. She had died and life him and it wasn't fair.

When the rage passed a sort of numbness crawled into the empty space between his ribs, bring a haze in which the world was quiet and still and empty. He dimly remembered searching the room for their stash – pulling out the small collection of valuables, checking them one by one and slipping them into his backpack. He closed his mother's eyes before turning to the door, but something stopped him there.

He had turned back to the body slowly and then he was on his knees and he was holding his mother's cold hand and her words were coming out of his mouth, bubbling up like water.

_Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy Name_

He'd never said them alone before, always mimicked the sounds from his mother's lips. They felt different on his tongue when he said them alone. He felt small, yet significant – like a great big eye had opened up on the ceiling and his mother's mysterious God was looking down on him.

The fervor of it all frightened him and he'd run from the room after that, slamming the door shut on the last place of safety he'd know for years.

He never saw his mother again. He figured someone must have found and burnt her body eventually. They had patrols for things like that.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Those were his mother's words too, though people pretended otherwise.

And then things got hard. The streets were dangerous and the people were cruel and life was _painful_.

Ethan worked on the Wall until the Wall was finished. After that, no one seemed to have a place for another hungry orphan. Refugees flooded the city by the thousands and Ethan was swept away in a crowd of need. The government solidified; people Ethan knew by face and shape from working the Wall were suddenly pulled away by an invisible separation of status. They promised work for everyone, but jobs that paid enough to feed you were scarce and no one seemed ready to acknowledge another kid living in the gutter.

Everyone was angry and everyone was desperate, but not everyone knew the city like Ethan. He got by stealing and lying and conning. He had the face for it, neither too sharp nor too innocent, and his fingers were sticky. Occasionally he'd recognize someone from the construction and they'd offer him a couch for the night or a blanket or some food. More often he'd make his home against brick walls and dumpsters.

When his luck ran low, he filled his stomach turning tricks in alleyways, knees pressed against the cold concrete.

The kneeling was the hardest part. His mother had taught him to kneel and taught him to pray and his mind had tangled the two together in a knot he couldn't unwind. A John would press to the back of his throat and God would open up all around him. He was never sure if he was hearing her prayers or echoing her moans. All the while that great eye consumed him and the cross-burnt against his chest.

He wondered if this was the real reason she'd give him her necklace at night. Not that the men would see her God, but that her God might see the men.

Ethan preferred the stealing.

It went on like that for years. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but also coming back to circle that mean line drawn in the sand.

He met his brother when he was thirteen. Met him properly, at least. He'd seen the other boy for months without drawing near, his plump, fed face and clean skin like a fire no one was brave enough to draw near. Of course, none of that lasted long and soon the other boy was just another thin, dirty face like the rest of them, avoided instead for the rage in his eyes that had him picking fights he lost more often than not. People like that - who felt so much, who raged at the world like they weren't scared of it raging back - those people were dangerous.

Maybe because he came from a long line of destitution, but Ethan found it easy to roll with the punches, baring his throat to the world that hated him only to pick it's pockets when it turned it's back. He got by okay, accepting his lot in life as his birthright.

He wasn't sure what to make of the boy who fought like he might single handedly destroy the unfairness of the world. He ducked his head and avoided him and watched him like a moth to flame. It was only a matter of time before he'd be sucked in a burned.

The day they met it was a rare cold night and Ethan was happy. As everyone huddled for warmth, Ethan took advantage of the weather to wander the empty streets, scrounging without competition. It was a little thing, yet it made him feel powerful, like he'd conquered the very weather itself.

It was winding into the morning hours when he finally decided to sleep. He turned off the main streets, ready to snake his way back to one of his nests, when a solitary figure standing in the middle of street pulled him up short.

It wasn't a man. Ethan had lived in the city before the Wall and he knew the lines of the being in font of him like he knew the skyline, all straight lines and perfect posture. He stuttered to a stop, his jubilee draining from him, replaced by a sudden rush of awe and terror that mingled together leaving him breathless. His mind stalled. He couldn't imagine what would bring the archangel into this part of the city – or, at least, he hoped he couldn't.

Before the thought could fully, he found himself dropping to his knees. He didn't know what he was offering except that it was everything, all that he had, and nothing, because he had nothing worthy. The movement drew the angel's attention and the figure turned his head, the attention hitting Ethan like a shot of lightning. The face that observed him was obscured in the darkness of the city, but Ethan never prayed with his head turned upward anyway.

And he _was _praying. The second his knees his the ground the words rose up in him. The cross on his neck felt like it was glowing. He wondered if the superstitions were real, if the angel could hear him. His mother's voice was all around him and God was close and so was his angel.

He didn't know what he was expecting, maybe nothing at all, but Ethan had watched this being save this town, almost single handedly, and it _felt _right kneeling before him. It felt like the only thing he could possibly offer to him. This - his knees, prayer, thanks, all of it - was the only thing he had left that mattered.

The archangel's boots clicked when he approached him and Ethan's heart shuddered, heavy and light all at once. The angel had stopped before him and Ethan had only a second to wonder how familiar that position was (he on his knees, another man towering over him) before strong hand grasped him by the shoulders and pulled him to his feet.

His mind had blanked. The archangel's face was smooth, calm except for the deep rivet between his brows.

His eyes were blue.

For once, Ethan's words had failed him. The angel had raised his hand and Ethan felt fingers on his neck for a moment – _angels were warm – should he scream? – _before he realized that the angel was pulling on the chain hidden there, drawing out his mother's necklace until the cross laid exposed against Ethan's pounding chest. For a moment, the archangel's fingers had hovered over the cross. Then he pulled away and God's eye closed and it was Ethan and the angel alone in the alley.

Ethan felt stripped – skin peeled off, hand up and open but holding nothing. Still, the archangel had said nothing, looking at the cross with a peculiar expression on his face, and Ethan didn't know what to do. He'd never had the attention of someone this important before – he wasn't made for it – not a person like him, a gutter kid and a whore.

The idea came upon him in an instant. He found himself reaching up and unclasping the chain, pulling the necklace off for the first time in years. It caught the light as he held it up, the very last thing he knew how to offer.

The angel's eyes had tracked the cross for a moment, before they broke away and found Ethan's face. The rivet was deeper now and there was a look in his eyes that the orphan couldn't decipher. He wanted to look away, every instinct of his was screaming for it, but the angel had caught him in a blue-eyed snare and Ethan knew somewhere deep that to look away would be to fail.

Then, decisively, the angel had stepped to the side and Ethan for the first time had seen what the being must have been looking at before he arrived. It was the boy, eyes swollen shut, face a bleeding mess relaxed into unconsciousness. Ethan had recognized the dirty blonde hair, familiar even stained in blood. He'd gotten into another fight, Ethan had realized dumbly, and then he was rushing forward, into the flame, cradling the boy's head. It was only when he saw the cross still dangling from his hand that he remembered the angel. By the time he whipped around the being was long gone.

Ethan had swallowed then, staring back down at the other boy. There must have been something special about him, to get the attention of the archangel. Maybe the boy had finally raged enough that even God had heard him.

He had never taken care of anyone other than himself before, but something life fire reared up when he touched the other boy, a flame jumping from one which to the next. Something like a weight settled on his shoulders and he paused just long enough to chain himself back to God and hide it under his shirt, before he was stripping out of his jacket, wrapping the other boy in it's warmth.

The other boy's eyes had fluttered when he'd pressed a piece of his own shirt against the bleeding head wound on his hairline. He'd squinted up at Ethan in suspicion for a moment and then, in a move that shocked Ethan to his core, he'd closed his eyes and relaxed against him.

Ethan hadn't been trusted in a very long time.

He had cleaned the boy up the best he could and then laid them both down, his jacket over both of them, tucking all of the boy's limbs underneath and rubbing heat into his goose pimpled flesh.

When daylight came, the boy thanked him with his name and a smile, probably the first real one Ethan had seen in years. Alex spent the next week trailing him like a wary puppy; all of the anger drained from him, approaching only at night when Ethan would curl up around him and tuck him in close without a word. It was through this that Ethan remembered that Alex was only eleven, though by that age Ethan had outlived his mother, built the Wall, and turned enough tricks to get a reputation. It was different with Alex though.

Everything was different with Alex. Suddenly Ethan had enough person in his life that he cared about and it changed everything.

Alex's shyness wore of quickly and before long it was Ethan tagging along as Alex got into fights and scoped out opportunities and stole ration cards. Alex was never happy just getting by – he was always seeking to better himself or, more often than not, helping others in need. It was weird, but Ethan accepted it. He'd never had a partner before and Alex, despite being new to the streets, was useful and knew how to fight and run and steal. It wasn't long until they were brothers, cutting open their palms and sharing blood, sharing food, sharing a life.

Ethan taught Alex how to survive – Alex taught Ethan how to live.

They were brothers, but they still each had their secrets.

Alex never breathed a word about his life before the streets. He kept a crumpled up letter in his pocket and at night he'd smooth it out and read it when he thought that Ethan was asleep.

Ethan didn't mind. He didn't talk about his mother either and the cross stayed carefully concealed underneath his shirt, though he knew Alex had noticed it and said nothing. He never told anyone about his encounter with the angel, though it continued to haunt him, blue eyes worming their way into his prayers more often than not.

In sharing a life together, they carefully looked away from certain things. Ethan ignored the way Alex flinched whenever anyone talked about fathers or the fact that he knew how to shoot a gun even though V1s were forbidden from any sort of firearm. In return, Alex never mentioned when Ethan would slip away when things got low and return a few hours later with swollen lips and whatever necessity they needed to tide them over. He'd turn his head when Ethan would mumble his prayers over meals or mutter his sins into the grimy pavement before sleep.

It was another one of Alex's grand ideas to join the military, but Ethan was the one to suck off enough John's to get them enough food that they don't look completely emaciated during the physical examination. They passed by the recruitment tests by the skin of their teeth and just like that they moved from the lives of V1 orphans to V2 soldiers, or at least Alex did.

Ethan's own process was delayed on the fact of him never registering with the city for an official class – the process usually performed on refugees when they entered the city, Ethan being a street kid originally overlooked. Ethan had been a resident of the city before the city even existed, and he had known his place well enough that the process had never seemed necessary. It caused a bit of a stir in the recruitment office and even Alex had stared at him oddly, a sentence of the life from before that they don't talk about unwillingly aired. Eventually, the army's desire for more body overrides the annoyance of the extra paperwork and Ethan got his designation and his first official V-Card.

Training was hell, but Ethan ate three meals a day for the first time in his life and sleeps in a real bed. The secrets that divided him and Alex shrunk as the military stripped any remaining sense of privacy from them. Ethan hid his cross and his prayers and Alex buried his past and his letter and they both forged new identities as soldiers of Vega.

It was a good place. They met Noma who laughed with them and didn't care that they had been V1s and ate warm food and wore uniforms that brought them power.

And then, one day, Alex got another idea.

The news of the Archangel Core spread through the ranks like wildfire and Alex danced in it. The recruitment was open to _everyone_, he argued against Ethan's incredulous look. Ethan had said he was crazy, even has his heart skipped a beat. The mere idea made his palms run sweaty. He recalled that night in the alleyway and his body flushed. He didn't know what made him more nervous, the thought of Alex getting in and leaving him forever or the idea of working under the very figure of his prayers.

In the end, Alex won out as he always did and Ethan slunk after him as they entered the trials.

The written exams passed dully. Ethan and more of the soldiers recruited from V1 were barely literate, Alex being the noted exception. With his help, Ethan managed to once again scrape by, and then it was the physical texts. Here, at least, Ethan held his own – even accelerated when it got to hand-to-hand where he was able to fight dirty. The officers frowned at him, even as he wrestled his opponent to the matt. He pretended not to care, relieved and guilty at his selfishness when they frowned at Alex too.

The last stage of the trails was listed as an interview, but really it consisted of nothing more than the remaining applicants lined up in rows as the angel walked by them, examining each one silently while the higher ups jabbered on in his ear.

Ethan felt sick and dizzy just being in the same room. It was like a presence pushing down on him, telling him he wasn't worthy. He watched out of the corner of his eye as he always did and saw the most hardened of soldiers flinch when the angel stopped before him, wondered at the few who managed to stare straight ahead without expression.

Time slowed down, one long held breath, as the angel moved closer to him. The angel paused when he got to Alex who stood at Ethan's left. Ethan wasn't surprised. If anyone would capture the angel's attention it would be Alex, whose fire had only grown under the pressure of the military.

He'd capture the angel's attention before.

Ethan didn't need to look to know that his brother didn't flinch. He could feel it with a certainty like his heart beating.

Slowly the angel turned away and then it was Ethan's turn. His heart was beating so loudly it filled the room with a rushing sound. Tunnel vision closed in around him as he fought to keep his body at attention, gaze forward, unable not to see the angel's blue eyes track over him.

His body strained against him and he knew with a perfect sudden clarity that had they been alone he would have fallen to his knees and been unable to rise. He could see the image in his mind and fought back the spasm as his entire body yearned for it. His mother's religion pressed down upon his shoulders. The cross hidden beneath his uniform burned against his chest. His knees shook. He wanted to pray.

He wanted to know if the archangel recognized him, if the angel knew that he was the same street urchin that once offered him everything – that would do so again in an instant. The revelation snuck up on him with a sudden sharp burst of clarity and he understood abruptly what he had been missing in his own anxiety. He hadn't dreaded the ArchAngel Core in fear that the angel would notice him, but in the terror that he might not.

The archangel's face was inscrutable, cold as the marble statues that littered the city, and then he turned and moved on and Ethan lost his chance to know.

His eyes remained fixed on a distance point in front of him for the rest of the session, dry even as a hot ball of frustration well up in his throat and refused to break. At their dismissal, the applicants departed quiet as ghosts – all shaken by their encounter with the divine. Alex scarcely nodded at him when Ethan went out for a walk. It was only when he was on the streets again that he remembered how to breath.

The streets of Vega were his lifeblood and he'd been away for too long. He took a deep breath and color seeped back into the world. He made a fist and felt his own body obey. Reality solidified around him, from where it had been knocked out of perspective by the encounter with the otherworldly.

His knees were still shaking as he wandered the streets aimlessly. Out of his uniform, no one minded him as he slipped from the V2 district and into the slums of the V1. Despite his time in the military, there was still as street look about him. People avoided his eyes and guarded their purses.

Nighttime fell softly, gently, and Ethan found himself well and truly in the worst of the worst. He leaned against an alley wall and closed his eyes, just breathing. He felt lost, set adrift and cut loose from a life he'd thought he finally claimed. It didn't seem right that after so much work the streets should still feel like home, but Ethan was used to unfair things.

There was a shuffle nearby and when Ethan opened his eyes a John was standing before him, looking at him impatiently. Ethan's legs crumbled beneath him. He finally _– finally – _found his God around him, curling up against his body, an eye upon his soul as the man pressed into his mouth.

He hadn't prayed like this in years, not since joining the military.

It was a release.

His sins were muffled by the slick slide of the stranger in and out of his mouth. Secrets poured out of him in every moan and gag and whimper. It was absolution.

The John left with a flick of a ration card and Ethan toppled, head coming down to touch the cool concrete in a position of complete surrender. He felt empty, drained of a weight that had been building up inside of him for years.

When he finally found his feet sometime later he was lighter. The trek to his bunk in the barracks felt like a dance he knew all the steps too.

That night he slept with his mother's necklace clasped in one hand.

The next morning he woke up and found himself promoted.


End file.
